WASHINGTON — Religion, birth control and President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul are about to collide at the Supreme Court yet again.
Faith-affiliated charities, colleges and hospitals that oppose some or all contraception as immoral are battling the administration over rules that allow them to opt out of covering the contraceptives for women that are among a range of preventive services required to be in health plans at no extra cost.
The religious-oriented nonprofit groups say the accommodation provided by the administration does not go far enough because they remain complicit in providing government-approved contraceptives to women covered by their plans, though the groups are not on the hook financially.
A new federal appeals court ruling is the first to agree with the nonprofits, after seven other appellate panels sided with the administration.
If the Supreme Court takes up the matter in its term that begins in October, it would be the fourth high court case stemming from the health care overhaul that Obama signed into law in 2010.
The high court has twice preserved the law, but has allowed some for-profit employers with religious objections to refuse to pay for contraceptives for women.
Houses of worship and other religious institutions are exempt.
For other religious-affiliated nonprofit groups such as hospitals and schools, the administration argues that the accommodation creates a generous moral and financial buffer between religious objectors and funding birth control.
But dozens of colleges, hospitals, charities and other organizations have said in lawsuits they still are being forced to participate in an effort to provide coverage for contraceptives, including some which they claim amount to abortion.
Appeals courts in Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have dismissed those claims. But the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis decided otherwise in a case involving several nonprofit groups in Missouri.
Seven appeals already are pending at the Supreme Court; the justices could decide by the end of October whether to hear one or more of those.
